The Only One Who Cares
by dulscar
Summary: No one can see the change more than him.  Short-ish, kind of angsty little one shot.  Nothing tragic.  Justin -centric.  T for mild language and theme in one spot.


The Only One Who Cares

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a/n: i read the most recent "hidden scene" story by iheartdisney128 [if you haven't, you should- they're lovely- and sometimes a little dirty :) ] and it made me a little sad... i felt so bad for justin and when i read that, the feeling got worse... then i started thinking about why... then this story happened...

if this story makes you a little sad, too, just remember... it's totally her fault. j/k. but seriously... her fault. lol! :)

the 3rd paragraph is something i saw in a review somewhere and i though it was pretty poiniant... so i paraphrased, and put it in... frankenberry, i think. hope you don't mind.

also, you need to have watched up to 'Wizards vs. Asteroids' for some of this to make sense. also, contains slight spoilers for 'Justin's Back In', but nothing you didn't see coming anyway.

Disclaimer: Like all the rest... I don't own WoWP, characters, etc, yadda, yadda, yadda. Here we go...

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Justin sits in his room. He's tired. He's _been_ tired. Tired of the drama, tired of things not working out for him, tired of who he is becoming. His voice is soft, full of doubt and self loathing, barely above a whisper as he talks to the only person who seems willing to listen to him.

It occurs to him, before he speaks, that maybe his sister is right. Maybe not everything has to be about hard work and dedication. Being lazy and selfish seem to bring _her_ all _he's_ ever wanted. So, maybe Billy Joel was right, too... "It's better to laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints"... but then again, that's not him.

He believes in right and wrong, good and evil. He's just glad that his life's not on a kids show... What kind of message would that send? If you work hard, if you're dedicated to what you do, and put your whole heart into it, it doesn't matter... because if you're lazy, if you're selfish, if you care about almost nothing, then all the good things in life come to you... so why bother?

As it turns out, you can blackmail the principal and graduate from high school, when you couldn't put forth the effort to do it on your own. You can probably even get better grades than someone who's spent their whole life studying, bettering themselves, so again, why bother putting forth the effort?

As he sits there, thinking about his life, he knows he can never be like his sister, he believes too strongly in morality and ethics... but there's something that keeps gnawing at the back of his mind... for the past several months, he has felt himself changing...

"What's happening to me?" Justin asks the young man in his room. "When did things start to go so wrong in my life?"

The young man just shook his head. He didn't know. "I used to be a good person, didn't I? I used to be kind, and compassionate, and loyal, right?" Justin asked, staring at the young man, watching expectantly. A frown, another shake of the head, and a slight shrug, was his answer.

"When did it all start spinning out of control? When did I lose what made me... me?" He asked, pain in his hushed tone.

"I don't know." The young man answered.

Justin sighed and ran a shaky hand through his hair. "What's happening to me, is it my fault? Did I bring this on myself? Or am I just a victim of happenstance, bound by karma, by fate? Forced to lead a life that I have grown to hate...? What have I done to deserve this?"

"I don't know."

"I've done some pretty amazing things with my life but..." Justin sighed, "... it just seems like it's never enough. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, it's _never_ enough."

He stared at the young man for a moment, eyes full of confusion, before looking away. "It seems like I never get recognition I feel I deserve... I'm ignored here, in my own home, more often than not, as of late. And why?"

"Is it because my family expects me to be 'perfect'?" he sneered at _that_ word, "Do they think I don't need the attention they seem to lavish on my siblings... Do they have any idea how much it hurts when they just _expect_ things from me... Expect me to do the right thing, to be the one who's 'steady', who's dependable, reliable."

"Do they have any idea it hurts me when I do something truly amazing and get... ignored? Sometimes it's too much... but I can't say anything. It's not what they _expect_." They young man merely nodded in understanding.

"I mean, I couldn't have potentially saved the planet from mankind, I _have_ saved the world from evil, but get repeatedly ignored, forgotten about, again and again."

Justin forcibly closed his eyes, taking a deep breath to calm himself. "I created an working engine that ran on nothing but _water_... I had broken all known laws of thermodynamics, rewritten mechanical engineering and hydrolics... I single handedly solved the energy crisis and global warming but what happened? I was ignored, forgotten about... passed over in the science fair for Max's 'bar-b-que o' life.' And what ever happened to my fully functional, non-polluting engine? Nothing. Nobody cared enough... I was ignored, and it fell by the wayside."

The young man kept his gaze focused on Justin as he continued. "I created life of my own... fully functional life. Frankie. Cobbled together from body parts, long deceased, and brought them, and her, to life. I combined a hard drive from my laptop to make a fully functional brain, more organized than anything in that stupid bbq pit. She could think, she could feel, interact."

Justin looked at the young man with pleading eyes. "Can you imagine the implications in the fields of neuroscience and biology? Medicine in general? Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's... all could've been cured or been made treatable... But what people don't get, what they don't understand is that, with Frankengirl, I cured _death_. I brought non-living tissue to_ life! _

Justin sighed heavily and rubbed his hands over his face. "But there was no ticker tape parade, no 'nice job', or 'good work' for me. There rarely ever is... Like they just _expect_ me to do these things, How can someone take that kind of initiative and not be rewarded?" The young man only shugged.

"I saved Wiz-Tech when older, more experienced, more powerful wizards couldn't... wouldn't. I created a robot, several of them, proving how capable I am in the field of robotics. But again, who cares? No one."

"I even created my own spell, adding my name to the annals of wizard history. I designed it to help people. It wasn't used for evil. Not to destroy, not to harm... and maybe that's why I'm so easily forgotten."

Justin leaned back in his chair, matching that of the young man looking back at him. "At least back then, I knew I was respected, I knew my family needed me... but something changed once I graduated high school."

He listened intently as Justin spoke. "No longer did I do these amazing, seeming impossible things. Almost overnight I became something I despised... I gave up my dream of going to college, one I've had since I was eight years old. When did I become this person? The one who gave up so easily on his dreams?" The young man sighed and ran an anxious hand through his hair as Justin continued. "Despite why I stayed..."

"No longer was I the person who fixed problems. Lately, it seems like I'm the cause of them... Suddenly it seems like I'm incapable of doing anything right, like I've become incompetent without warning. So I ask again... What's happening to me?"

"I could create a water powered engine, cure death, save a school, and the world, create an elaborate 'fake' magic carpet out of spare bicycle parts and some pots and pans... but now... I couldn't even fix the family robe when I accidentally destroyed it. I couldn't find a way to change Max back when we turned him into a girl. All of the spells I know, all of the knowledge I have about magic and potions were all for naught... It's almost like I've forgotten everything I've ever known about magic."

The young man leans forward, matching Justin's position, hearing the distress in his voice, still soft, still half-whispered. "Suddenly, I'm incapable of doing anything by myself. Suddenly I need help doing almost everything. The only thing I've managed to get right in almost a year was getting Dean out of Mason's stomach... even then, I had to have help."

"Why did I become this person? When did I become so... useless. I'm twenty years old, still living at home, and have almost nothing to my name. I still work at a subshop..." Justin trailed off. "When will things turn around for me?"

"It seem like the only time I even get to interact with my family anymore is to be the butt of some fucking joke, to screw something up so badly that _I_ have to be the one who's saved. When did I become _that_ person?"

"Why does it seem like Alex and Max are both becoming more mature while I seem to be growing more and more immature everyday?"

Justin drew in a ragged breath, unable to steady himself. "Then Alex wins that award. And no matter what anyone says, Rosie and I were the ones who saved the world that day. Not Alex. And as I play those events out in my mind, watching them over and over in agonizing detail, I know I'm right... But that doesn't matter. Once again, everything revolves around _her, _and I get ignored."

"I know I shouldn't have said what I said in that hologram, but I was just so pissed off... so tired of being forgotten about, that something inside of me snapped when she took the credit without a moment's hesitation."

Justin chuckled callously for a moment. "And then, like some sick fucking joke, I'm told that I could've gotten back into the wizard competition if I would have just said something heartfelt... Bullshit. I think it was just another way to make me look like an idiot. You know damn good and well," he said, looking at the young man, "that they would've reviewed that first... I think that they put _mine_ first just to humiliate me again... it's all I seem to be good for anymore." Justin finished sadly.

The young man took a deep breath, looking back at Justin's hollow eyes, listening to his quickly saddening words. "And to make matters worse, now, I feel the urge to prove myself so I tried to show Chase The Beast Tamer that monster hunters were just as good... but that didn't work out for me either. Where before, I was able to stand up to a full werewolf without a second though, even though I was afraid, when I was in that ring, I just ended up cowering behind Max."

Moisture brimmed in his eyes and he blinked furiously, forcing it to go away. "What am I turning into?" He said after a moment. "I used to care about people and what happened to them but after at Angel of Darkness fiasco, I just watched, with a sick, twisted grin as dad was about to put those people that Max turned into fruit into the blender. Even though I knew what they were... they were people, little girls, and they were about to be killed, but, yet, I did nothing..."

"It made me sick when I finally realized I had done this."

A tear finally slipped from his eyes. "Nobody else seemed to care either, but what hurt the most was that I remembered when I used to care... and then, when we went to the beach and that fortune teller gave Alex that fortune that said 'Say goodbye to your life', I just watched, once we 'fixed' things as a little girl, no more than ten, was about to get the same fortune. Luckily, it was just some stupid game-show, but we didn't know this at the time. And I just watched as she walked to her potential demise... I did nothing. Niether did Alex or Max, but it made me want to throw up... to watch a little girl die and not have the courage to stop it."

Justin took a deep breath and wiped his eyes, not able to meet the young man's gaze. "Maybe it's because nobody seems to take interest in what I do anymore. Maybe it's because I'm so starved for attention that I do these things? I don't know. Like when Alex went to meet Mason's parents and Max had messed up that spell..." he said, looking up again. "I tried so hard to get Max to ask for my help so finally somebody would need me again. If it would have been an episode from the story of our lives, I might as well have written it myself... at least I was getting some attention again. At least someone needed me again."

"And I know what you're thinking." He said, pointing at the young man. "But, is it so wrong for me to want my family to notice me, to pay attention to me? Is it wrong of me to want their affection, their support, their approval?" Justin pleaded.

The young man only shook his head briefly. "No."

Justin sighed heavily and leaned back in his chair. "Is it wrong for me to be upset that suddenly I can't do anything right? It it wrong of me to want to be self reliant again and not be so incompetent when, literally, less than a year ago, I had hopes and dreams, and was the one people came to for help? "

"No."

"I just... I just don't know what's happening to me. I don't know what to do anymore." Justin said, tears brimming in his eyes again. "I mean, I've grown so careless, I got my foot stuck in that crevice on that stupid asteroid and suddenly, I'm too useless to free myself... I can't remember a spell, I can't think of a scenario to get myself out."

"Luckily, Alex was there to free me. And this time she _did_ save the world. And, even though I can't tell her, I nominated her for Wizard of the Year. She deserves it this time."

Justin clenched his fist in anger before he continued. "But what I can't believe is how quickly I gave up. We found the missle, I analyzed the situation, and, just like that, I gave up... I would've never done that in the past. On more than one occasion, I was accused of over-analyzing a situation... but this time..."

Justin looked at the young man staring back at him and lowered his eyes. "I couldn't even get back into my family's wizard competition without help... I can't help feeling how useless I've become. And to make things worse, I blamed my class' failure on Alex... God, what the fuck is wrong with me? Why would I do that? Jealousy? Self pity? I just don't know anymore."

"All I want is to be respected again, to be needed again, not to be invisible anymore." Justin said, tears now falling freely. "As I look around this..." he paused, looking around his room, "... this 'world' I can't help thinking that maybe that wish Alex made with the genie years ago is still working against me... like I'm slowly fading away into nothing or maybe that the 'college Justin's' brain is still affecting me... forcing me to be inept."

"I know my family loves me but... sometimes I feel that they don't _like_ me anymore... like I'm just some warm body, taking up space. And the way the jokes and pranks at my expense have only gotten worse over these past few months, I can't help thinking that I'm right..."

The young man in his room, only nodded. He seemed to feel the same way.

"But what can I do? I feel trapped here, unable to break away from this place. But when I think about my options, I shudder."

He lowered his head, his voice breaking with grief. "I could leave, run away. But would anybody miss me? Would it matter to them that I'm not around anymore?"

He choked up, tears falling again as he considered his next option. "And if I just killed myself would anybody care? How long would it be before they noticed that I'm gone? When I miss my shift in the subshop," he sobbed, "when somebody messes up a spell and finally needs my help?" So choked were his words that he barely got out, "Would they... even... care?" before burying his face in his hands.

He wept into his hands for several moments before he jerked up and violently shook his head. "No! I'm not taking the coward's way out. I can't. I won't! ... I just... I don't know what else to do?"

He took several deep, cleansing breaths and looked into the mirror at the young man he'd been talking to all evening. "Why am I telling you this?" he asked himself, wiping his eyes.

"It's simple. You seem to be the only one who'll listen. After all that I've done for the benefit of society, the world, after all I've done for my family, and now, how I've been forgotten about, ignored, degraded and humiliated... It seems that you're the only one who cares."

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end

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well, there ya' go. one final 'tired of justin being treated like crap' fic. at least this one's not angry and violent. :)

this will be the last that you hear from me... at least for quite a while. *laughs* much to some of y'all's relief i'm sure.

any fic you may be waiting for me to update, won't be for quite some time, if ever... sorry.

Okay, that's it... Peace Out.


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